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Menu Tracker: New items from Boston Market, Dunkin’ and Taco BellMenu Tracker: New items from Boston Market, Dunkin’ and Taco Bell

Plus additions at Auntie Anne’s , Bartaco, Boston’s Pizza Restaurant & Sports Bar, California Pizza Kitchen , Church’s Chicken, Donatos, Fatburger, Golden Krust, Grimaldi’s Pizzeria, Huddle House, The Hummus & Pita Co., Nathan’s Famous, Pizzeria Locale, The Salad House, Slater’s 50/50, Taziki’s Mediterranean Cafe, Velvet Taco, Wienerschnitzel, Zalat Pizza, Zaxby’s and Zombie Burger

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

October 29, 2020

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Boston Market has added a whole new late-night menu, and Taco Bell has grouped a bunch of existing items into its new Veggie Cravings menu, and also added two brand new items to it: A Black Bean Chalupa and a Veggie Nachos Party Pack.

Beans, of course, are the original plant-based protein, but California Pizza Kitchen, Golden Krust and The Hummus and Pita Co. are all adding the newfangled kind, and a new concept, Zombie Burger, has two options for meat substitutes on any of its burgers.

In other burger news, Slaters 50/50 is bringing back its seasonal Thanksgiving Burger and Fatburger is reminding us that there’s just over two months left in this horrible, horrible year with The Hang-in-There-Burger.

Bartaco and Boston’s Pizza have a different approach to getting through the year: New cocktails.

If you’d rather drink something rich and cold, there are new frozen drinks at Auntie Anne’s and Nathan’s Famous. Dunkin’s has some more seasonal drinks, hot and cold, plus a new sandwich.

In pizza news, besides CPK’s new meatless item, Donatos has a bacon-heavy duo, Zalat Pizza has a Reuben Pizza with Thousand Island sauce, corned beef and sauerkraut, and Colorado-based Pizzeria Locale has collaborated with local chef Caroline Glover to make a pizza for charity.

Grimaldi’s Pizzeria does not have a new pizza, but it is selling pumpkin cheesecake.

Huddle House has new waffles, Taziki’s Mediterranean Cafe has a new mac & cheese, and Wienerschnitzel has three kinds of Tater Scoops.

What? You ask. No new fried chicken sandwiches?

On the contrary: Church’s has rolled one out nationwide with callouts to other signature items — its honey butter biscuits and the pickled jalapeño that comes with its spicy chicken. Zaxby’s is offering a new chicken sandwich, but only in parts of Tennessee and Kentucky for now, The Salad House, a three-unit-chain in New Jersey, has a fried chicken sandwich as part of its new seasonal menu, and the Weekly Taco Feature at Velvet Taco is called the KFC (Kimchee Fried Chicken).

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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